It’s 5.30pm at the Waldorf Astoria Washington DC and a Texan couple have just come over to our table. “You’ve done a fantastic job,” they tell my guest. “Keep giving them hell.” Mike, Kim and their son Cash are in DC for a few days on a trip and have just spotted one of their idols: the podcast host Natalie Winters. Kim comes up to compliment her on her denim hotpants. She’d thought about wearing something similarly outré this evening, but had been told the dress code was a little more, well, conservative in Washington. “Oh, you should have worn it,” Winters replies. “That’s why you have to do it even more.”
The family have been fans since the start of Covid when Winters, a former intern for Steve Bannon’s War Room, was emerging as a voice on the podcast itself. Fast-forward and Winters is now one of Washington’s most familiar faces. She is a White House correspondent and reports for War Room: the embodiment of changing tides here in the swamp as the Maga base and new media disrupt the old DC establishment. Winters is a regular sight on television, outside the White House, and social media, where she frequently